James Lovelock: 'Saving the planet is a foolish, romantic extravagance'
Jim Lovelock, environmentalist, scientist, and celebrated proposer of the Gaia hypothesis, has always taken the long view of Earth's future. So it feels appropriate that he should have retired to a coastguard's cottage perched above Chesil Beach on Dorset's Jurassic Coast – so called because 180 million years of geological history lie exposed along its cliffs and coves.
This shoreline is constantly eroding. In the winter storms of 2013, Lovelock's cottage was cut off for four days when the road leading to it was washed into the sea – not that Lovelock, whose latest book is entitled A Rough Ride to the Future, needed any reminder of the precariousness of our world. A decade ago, he predicted that billions would be wiped out by floods, drought and famine by 2040. He is more circumspect about that date these days, but he has not changed his underlying belief that the consequences of global warming will catch up with us eventually. His conviction that humans are incapable of reversing them – and that it is in any case too late to try – is also unaltered. In the week when the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change reported that the world is still miles off meeting its 2030 carbon emission targets, Lovelock cannot easily be dismissed.
There are other doomsayers. What makes this one so unusual is his confounding cheerfulness about the approaching apocalypse. His optimism rests on his faith in Gaia – his revolutionary theory, first formulated in the 1970s, that our planet is not just a rock but a complex, self-regulating organism geared to the long-term sustenance of life. This means, among other things, that if there are too many people for the Earth to support, Gaia – Earth – will find a way to get rid of the excess and carry on.
Lovelock's concern is less with the survival of humanity than with the continuation of life itself. Against that imperative, the decimation of nations is almost inconsequential to him. "You know, I look with a great deal of equanimity on some sort of happening – not too rapid – that reduces our population down to about a billion," he says, five minutes into our meeting. "I think the Earth would be happier ... A population in England of five or 10 million? Yes, I think that sounds about right." To him, even the prospect of a nuclear holocaust has its upside. "The civilizations of the northern hemisphere would be utterly destroyed, no doubt about it," he says, "but it would give life elsewhere a chance to recover. I think actually that Gaia might heave a sigh of relief." continue reading NEWSWEEK
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